Wiley microsoft sharepoint 2007 for dummies apr 2007 ISBN 0470099410

Chapter 17 - Providing Access to Business IntelligencePart V - Administering SharePoint Chapter 18 - Administering and Monitoring SharePoint Chapter 19 - Backing Up the Server Part VI -

manage data and business processes, use sites toimprove employee relations and much more.

Chapter 17 - Providing Access to Business Intelligence

Part V - Administering SharePoint

Chapter 18 - Administering and Monitoring SharePoint Chapter 19 - Backing Up the Server

Part VI - The Part of Tens

Chapter 20 - Ten SharePoint Resources Worth Checking

Out Chapter 21 - Ten Positive Outcomes from

Implementing SharePoint Index

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Sidebars

The fun and easy way to deploy SharePoint in your business today!

Are you stymied by SharePoint? This plain-English guide offers simple instructions and focused coverage

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SharePoint, create sites and grant access, manage data and business processes, use sites to improve employee relations and marketing, put interactive reports and forms on a portal, and much more!

Discover how to:

Set up a SharePoint portal

Manage portal content and Office documents Integrate Office 2007 with SharePoint

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degree in Business Management and Computer Information Systems.She still lives in Indy, about three miles south of downtown in the

wonderful Garfield Park South neighborhood

In her spare time, Vanessa likes to read books about sociology, religion,spirituality, and current affairs She enjoys hiking, traveling, and spendingtime with her family, including her two dogs Rosie and Buffy She alsoenjoys staying current on enterprise technologies and consumer

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Vanessa loves to talk about SharePoint You can contact her via her Website at www.sharepointgrrl.com

Author’s Acknowledgments

In the time that’s passed since I wrote SharePoint 2003 For Dummies

(Wiley), I now have two dogs and another cat I couldn’t have finishedthis book if I didn’t have Buffy (Dog # 1) to lick my toes and Rosie (Dog #2) to play tug-of- war with The cat lies on my desk while I’m trying towork I could do without the cat

numbing I came in contact with a brave few this time around I know

(red) I’ll never forget our time together in SharePoint purgatory

babble while writing this book - over breakfast with Mel, over far too manycoffees with Denis, over e-mail with Katie, and over dinner with Mel Ipromise to stop talking about SharePoint eventually

I must also thank all the poor souls who’ve had to endure my SharePoint-Finally, I need to thank all the readers You bought the first SharePointbook and sent wonderful feedback You took me with you to your serverrooms, board rooms, and rest rooms I hope to have that privilege again

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through ouronline registration form located at www.dummies.com/register

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include thefollowing:

Mary C Corder, Editorial Director

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

SharePoint is nothing new Heck, it’s been around since 2001 As fast astechnology changes, SharePoint should be ancient history by now Quite

to the contrary, SharePoint has finally found its legs after all these years

ShareWhat, you say? SharePoint is the server-side connective tissuethat binds the slippery client-side outputs of office workers into a

manageable, searchable, and accessible information environment Goneare the days when workers just organized their files in electronic foldersand had to call the help desk every time something was deleted

accidentally SharePoint provides a self-service environment where officeworkers can take control of information - how it’s organized, who getsaccess to it, and how it’s displayed

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know SharePoint from Shinola You aren’talone Many obstacles are along the path to a successful SharePointimplementation This book uses plain English to get you started on yourSharePoint journey so that nothing trips you up along the way

Since SharePoint was first released in 2001, Microsoft has made steadyprogress on the product’s features The first few releases of SharePointconsisted primarily of the ability to dynamically generate team Web sites.These sites hosted document libraries, tasks lists, and calendars to

enable a small team of users to manage documents and collaborate on aproject The initial product was called SharePoint Team Services but waschanged in 2003 to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

used by WSS to create team sites turned out to be very versatile andcould be used for more than just team collaboration Many companiesstarted creating SharePoint sites to solve all kinds of business problems,such as managing help desk tickets and automating expense check

The building blocks - lists, libraries, and user-customizable Web pages -requests

Microsoft created a more expensive add-on product, SharePoint PortalServer, that added the ability to create portals and search across teamsites The portal allowed companies to provide centralized access to alltheir team sites

Despite SharePoint’s usefulness, the product’s adoption was nichey andsporadic Also, there was (and still is) significant confusion in the

marketplace about what SharePoint is and what it does When Microsoftsat down to consider the product’s future after the 2003 release, they saw

an opportunity to more tightly integrate the product with the Office clientsthat virtually all office workers already have on their desktops Increasedintegration with Office 2007 catapulted SharePoint onto center stage

Microsoft used a host of existing and newly created products to developthe 2007 release of SharePoint Like pieces of a puzzle, the followingproduct opportunities came together to create a better SharePoint:

ASP.NET 2.0: The release of ASP.NET 2.0 provided the

foundational layer that was missing in previous versions of

SharePoint By using ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft was able to focus

on low-level services Some of the ASP.NET 2.0 features used orextended by SharePoint include the Web Parts framework,

personalization, pluggable authentication, and master pages.WSS 3.0 is truly a testimony to what you can build with ASP.NET2.0!

major player in providing the Office 2007 server infrastructure

Search: In 2006, Google went after the desktop, and Microsoft

went after search Microsoft introduced a family of search

products that target the Web, desktop, and enterprise with theexpressly stated intent of taking Google head-on SharePoint isthe key element that delivers enterprise search

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF): The release of WF with

version 3.0 of the NET Framework brings a workflow engine toSharePoint, Office 2007, and all applications that run on

Windows Workflows make it possible to step through a process,such as submitting a document for approval Building a separateworkflow engine decouples workflow capabilities from specificserver products Instead of having only a few products with

workflow, all products can have workflow SharePoint extends WFand provides several out-of-the-box workflow implementationsthat businesses can use to automate business processes withoutwriting custom code

winning search while keeping its talons securely fastened to the businessdesktop, Microsoft completely re-architected SharePoint into a layer oftechnologies that consists of these two primary products:

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) version 3.0 is the

foundational product that provides a set of building blocks forcreating SharePoint applications The two primary usage

scenarios for WSS are still document management and

collaboration The third usage scenario is a platform for creatingapplications with SharePoint

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is the server-side infrastructure that turns Office 2007 clients into generatorsand consumers of content for SharePoint applications MOSS

2007 is the successor to SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Although MOSS supports the creation of portals, Microsoft hasexpanded it to include many enterprise-level services, such asbusiness intelligence and business process integration MOSS

2007 is an example of an application created using WSS as aplatform

At this point, I could give you the obligatory laundry list of SharePoint’sfeatures Even if I did that, you still wouldn’t understand how to use

SharePoint Instead, this book focuses on using SharePoint’s out-of-thebox application building blocks to get up and running solving problemsrelevant to your business

Now that SharePoint is no longer the red-headed stepchild of Microsoft’sserver family, an increasing amount of buzz surrounds it Whether you’rebrand new to SharePoint or you’re looking to get acquainted with

SharePoint’s new features, this book is for you

To help you cut through the hype, this book tells you everything you need

to know to start using WSS or MOSS 2007 in your business today If

you’re unsure about which SharePoint product to implement, I give youthe breakdown of where WSS features end and MOSS 2007 picks up

You’ll get guidance for planning your project and ideas for ways you

might use SharePoint in your organization I don’t go into the details ofperforming upgrades in this book, although I do explain how to set up andconfigure a SharePoint infrastructure

I know you don’t want to read this book cover to cover, and you don’thave to Your role in SharePoint’s implementation makes some topicsmore relevant than others If you want to zero in on a particular topic, youcan use the table of contents and index to focus on that coverage Part II

focuses almost exclusively on Windows SharePoint Services, whereas

Parts III and IV lean more toward MOSS 2007 coverage I compiled a list

of topics that I know many of you are interested in:

see Chapters 1, 2, 3, 18, and 19

Setting up, configuring, deploying, and administering SharePoint -Understanding the basics of SharePoint sites, including how tocreate, configure, and secure them - see Chapters 4, 5, and 6

see Chapters 7 and 8

Configuring and understanding SharePoint’s search features -Diving into SharePoint’s options for document and records

management - see Chapter 15

Using SharePoint to manage and publish content to portals andInternet-facing sites and exploring your options for customizingSharePoint’s look and feel - see Chapter 16

Getting introduced to SharePoint’s features for integrating

enterprise applications into SharePoint, creating business

intelligence (BI) dashboards and reports, and displaying Excelspreadsheets in SharePoint - see Chapter 17

differences between the products

I run both servers on a single physical machine using Virtual Server

2005 As long as you have a fast processor along with plenty of RAM anddisk space, you should be fine using a virtual server for a testing

environment

While writing this book, I had to make a few assumptions about you - thereader Don’t worry, I didn’t take you for the pocket protector type with adozen servers in your bedroom But I wouldn’t be surprised to find a

hipster PDA and a pile of Mountain Dew cans

In order to work the examples in this book, you need access to a workingSharePoint installation with either WSS version 3 or MOSS 2007 If youdon’t already have a SharePoint server, I walk you through how to installSharePoint in Chapter 2 I’m assuming you know your way around aWindows server and have basic networking skills You certainly don’tneed to be certified or know how to build a server

I also assume that you’re working inside a Windows network that’s

running Active Directory (AD) You don’t have to run AD to perform most

of the examples in this book The examples in this book haven’t beentested when accessing SharePoint from the Internet

SharePoint is a server-based technology, so you have to know the name

of your server in order to access SharePoint’s resources Because I don’tknow what the names of your servers are, I have to assume that youknow the server names and URL paths to your SharePoint server While Iwalk you through all the various ways you can access SharePoint (it isn’tjust the browser, you know - see Chapter 6), you have to substitute yourserver and path names to access the resources in your SharePoint

deployment

This book groups related SharePoint topics together in parts Each partcovers a different aspect of implementing or using SharePoint

Part I: Setting Up SharePoint

In this part, you get your first lessons in SharePoint-speak I walk youthrough setting up SharePoint servers and configuring the high-level

infrastructure that holds your business content You probably want toread Chapter 1, but you can browse Chapters 2 and 3 if you already have

a functioning SharePoint server

Part II: Exploring SharePoint’s Building Blocks

Part II walks you through all the foundational elements used to createsolutions in SharePoint Chapters 4, 5, and 6 address issues related tocreating, navigating, and securing a site infrastructure Chapters 7 and 8

get into the meat and potatoes of solving business problems with two ofSharePoint’s most useful features: data and business process

management

Part III: Improving Information Worker Collaboration and Productivity

In Part III, I start to look at some of the ways that end users interact withSharePoint in their native habitat, Windows client applications Chapter 9

focuses on accessing SharePoint through Office 2007 clients, other

Windows applications, and alternatives to using Web browsers In

Chapter 10, I explore using e-mail to send information to and receivinginformation from SharePoint Chapters 11–14 deal primarily with MOSS

2007 features, including portals, user profiles, personalization, and

enterprise search

Part IV: Enterprise Applications for SharePoint

In this part, I cover some of the more advanced features of MOSS 2007

management and records management features Chapter 16 exploresWeb content publishing, along with opportunities for customizing

SharePoint’s look and feel I explain the opportunities for data integrationand creating business intelligence dashboards in Chapter 17

Part V: Administering SharePoint

The chapters in this part follow up on the material covered in Chapters 2

and 3 by explaining SharePoint’s server farm administration features.You’ll see how to monitor your server farm and perform a backup

Part VI: The Part of Tens

When it comes to SharePoint, a single resource is never enough In

Chapter 20, I share with you my top ten list of resources for staying up tospeed on all things SharePoint And because making the business case

is vital to all successful SharePoint implementations, I offer you ten

positive outcomes that you might aspire to achieve with your SharePointimplementation

be wary of a problem or common pitfall, this icon lets you know

Alright, you’re all set and ready to jump into Chapter 1 You don’t have tostart there; you can jump in anywhere you like - the book was written toallow you to do just that But if you want to get the full story from thebeginning, jump to Chapter 1 first - that’s where all the action starts (Ifyou already have a SharePoint server up and running, you might want tojump ahead to Chapter 4, where you can get your hands dirty with somesite content.)

Part I: Setting Up SharePoint

Chapter 1: Getting to Know SharePoint

Chapter 2: Installing SharePoint

Chapter 3: Creating the Site Hierarchy

Discover SharePoint’s features and how they fit into your existing

technology environment I show you how to get up and running with yourvery own SharePoint server Because installing SharePoint is only halfthe battle, I also get you started on the necessary next steps you’ll need

to carry out before you can hang that Open sign on your SharePointdeployment

If you believe everything you read on the Internet (and who doesn’t?),you know that SharePoint is either an over-hyped Microsoft product with

no real business value or it’s the next Messiah in information and

knowledge management So, which is it? Only you can answer that

question

SharePoint’s usefulness in your organization is determined by whetherSharePoint has a role in your existing information systems environment

To determine SharePoint’s role, you really have to understand what

SharePoint is and what it does However, simply having this knowledgedoesn’t guarantee you a successful SharePoint implementation

However, it does give you a strong foundation, which is what this chapter

is all about

SharePoint is a family of technologies from Microsoft that provides aserver infrastructure to support the needs of information workers andtheir employers These needs include collaboration, knowing who’s

online, document storage, and the ability to inform and be informed Thecompanies that hire information workers need to audit, monitor, organize,retain, and protect information

SharePoint makes it possible for companies to engage all their

information workers through the tools people are using already - Officeclients (such as Word and Excel), Internet browsers (such as InternetExplorer), and e-mail clients (such as Outlook) Obviously, SharePointworks best with Office 2007 Whether you’re using Office 2007 or

OpenOffice, SharePoint gives employers a means to connect with

workers where they work - at their desktops

By reaching workers where they work, companies can use SharePoint as

a key component for implementing new strategic initiatives and internalcommunications plans Beyond sending blast e-mails and conveningone-time town hall meetings, companies can use SharePoint to integrateinformation about campaigns, achievement of performance objectives,and company news into workers’ daily routines Sound like informationoverload? It need not be SharePoint makes it easy to target content sothat people see only the information that’s relevant to achieving theirobjectives

With SharePoint, companies can create a managed information

environment that isn’t centrally managed Yes, it’s secure, protected, andaudited, but workers make decisions about how information is organized

If workers change their minds about the organizing structure, it can bechanged easily By evaluating the ways that employees set up their workenvironments in SharePoint - where they store documents, the propertiesthey affix to documents, and with whom they’re collaborating - the

information environment created in SharePoint can provide companieswith valuable feedback When’s the last time your information

environment told you how many Word documents pertained to a

particular customer account or product? You can get that kind of

SharePoint also provides workers with the ability to connect with eachother Instead of sending files back and forth via e-mail, workers can set

up information environments that make it easy to collaborate on

documents or share a calendar

SharePoint uses a Web site infrastructure to deliver the bulk of its

features Users can use a Web browser or familiar Office clients, such asWord and Excel, to access SharePoint’s features Office clients enableinformation workers to use familiar tools in new ways, which reducestraining and support costs and increases solution development

opportunities SharePoint offers organizations a much faster return oninvestment because SharePoint fits neatly into most companies’ existingtechnology infrastructures

SharePoint isn’t a new technology The ability to provision team sites foruse with Office clients was first introduced in May 2001 (as shown in

Figure 1-1) with a product called SharePoint Team Services SharePoint

Portal Server 2001, a product for connecting team sites, was released in

June 2001 With each subsequent release, more and more features wereadded Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) version 3, which was

released in November 2006, represents a major re-architecting of theproduct

Figure 1-1: SharePoint product release timeline.

Windows Server operating system The portal product, SharePoint PortalServer 2003, released alongside Office 2003 The latest release,

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, is now officially part ofthe Microsoft Office suite of products

In the days of client/server applications, an application commonly

consisted of a relatively short stack of technologies A Windows

application might be written in a programming language, such as VisualBasic, that accesses a database on a database server As long as youhad network connectivity and your database was up and running,

probability was high that you could use the application More importantly,installing, supporting, maintaining, and troubleshooting the applicationwas relatively easy

In the same way that today’s information workers don’t work in isolation,neither can SharePoint To support the needs of workers and their

employers, SharePoint requires a relatively high stack of technologies.Understanding SharePoint’s technologies in broad terms is importantbecause this knowledge helps you do the following:

Identify opportunities for reuse and customization: When you

gain an understanding of the technologies SharePoint uses, youcan leverage some of your existing infrastructure You don’t have

to start at square one Also, you can extend SharePoint to findnew ways to use the infrastructure

Troubleshoot SharePoint: You’ll encounter many points of

failure in SharePoint - and discover that many aren’t actually part

of the SharePoint software proper By understanding how

SharePoint works and which technologies SharePoint uses, youcan develop a systematic approach to troubleshooting

Understand the skills necessary to implement and support SharePoint: SharePoint requires a lot of skills, and it’s not likely

that you have all of them I know I sure don’t You have to makearrangements to acquire the skills you don’t have in-house

The SharePoint family of technologies consists of several products In

SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007(MOSS) Each of these products has a different role in the stack of

.NET Framework version 2.0 and 3.0: This is a set of software

that installs ASP.NET and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).After you enable ASP.NET 2.0 on the server, you don’t have to doanything else to configure NET

SQL Server 2000 or later: This is Microsoft’s database

management system SharePoint can create all the databases itneeds, or you can create them yourself You’re responsible formanaging backups of your data

Windows Server 2003 or later: This is Microsoft’s server

operating system Monitor the servers that host SharePoint justlike you would any server

I walk you through installing these technologies on your server in Chapter

2 Figure 1-2 shows the stack of technologies required to run WSS Note

services, such as electronic commerce Much of the ability to customizeand extend SharePoint comes from ASP.NET 2.0

You can think of the technologies listed in Figure 1-2 as SharePoint’senabling technologies SharePoint requires these technologies in order tofunction properly SharePoint integrates with many other technologies toprovide extra functionality, such as Microsoft Exchange Server See

Chapter 9 for more information on such technologies

WSS provides the core set of services consumed by all products in theSharePoint family, especially MOSS 2007 These services include thefollowing:

Data storage and content management: WSS provides lists

and libraries as structures for storing data Lists are primarilyused to store tabular data, whereas libraries store files WSSprovides a robust set of services for managing the data and files

Use list items and libraries in a business process (See

Chapter 8)

WSS includes many specialized kinds of lists and libraries thatyou can use to perform certain tasks See Chapter 4 for a

complete run-down of the lists and libraries you encounter inSharePoint

What’s in a name?

When someone says SharePoint, what does he mean? Is he referring

to a specific SharePoint product or the whole kit and caboodle? Theonly way to know for sure is to ask him Although, don’t be surprised ifyou don’t get a straight answer With SharePoint, you inevitably

encounter an abundance of hype, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.Generally speaking, when someone says SharePoint, I find he usuallymeans whichever SharePoint product is most relevant given the

context of the discussion, or he’s just referring to the SharePoint

technologies Many people genuinely don’t know

Although I hate to add to the confusion, I find that constantly referring

to a specific SharePoint product, such as WSS or MOSS 2007, isequally confusing Because most people don’t know the differencebetween the two products, I usually just use the term SharePoint In

so referring to them generically usually is technically correct For

example, both WSS and MOSS have document management

features (The MOSS features just expand on those found in WSS.)Similarly, MOSS has some very specific built-in features for businessintelligence However, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t use WSSfor business intelligence

In this book, I try to be specific about which product I’m referring to,especially when I’m talking about MOSS 2007 I often use the genericterm SharePoint any time I’m referring to WSS or any feature that’savailable in both products

Web platform and site model: All SharePoint’s features are

delivered via a hierarchy of Web sites It takes only a few mouseclicks to generate sites with SharePoint’s site provisioning model(see Chapter 4) SharePoint generates a full-featured Web sitebased on an XML configuration file (WSS includes many of theseconfiguration files that allow you to create a variety of SharePointsites to suit the needs of your business You can also customizethe files or create your own.)

Because SharePoint is an ASP.NET Web application, SharePoint

is an excellent platform for delivering Web applications that

include a Web part framework, navigation, and dynamic form andpage generation SharePoint gives you a viable alternative tobuilding ASP.NET Web applications from scratch

Security: SharePoint provides a security-trimmed user interface

so that users see only the options they have permissions for.SharePoint uses groups and roles for granting access to securecontent, and virtually everything in SharePoint is securable Themost common authentication scenario for SharePoint is ActiveDirectory, although SharePoint supports custom authenticationschemes (such as forms-based authentication) as well See

Chapter 6 for more details on SharePoint’s security features

model that makes it possible to isolate technical administratorsfrom sensitive content Administrators can’t see the files and

other content that information workers save in SharePoint sites.Additional administration features include auditing, monitoring,and backing up and restoring tools SharePoint provides

specialized administration Web sites All administrative featuresare also accessible from the command line and via code Chapter

18 walks you through accessing the SharePoint administrativefeatures

Services: A number of services are provided by SharePoint that

support SharePoint’s other core services These include

mail (see Chapter 10) WSS indexes all list, library, and site

notification services, such as RSS feeds, alerts, and inbound e-content so these items can be searched (see Chapter 14)

SharePoint also provides migration tools to assist with deployingSharePoint

Application programming interfaces (APIs): SharePoint has a

powerful object model and Web services Everything you can dofrom the SharePoint user interface uses SharePoint APIs; thus,you can write code to access all SharePoint’s features

SharePoint makes available numerous before-and-after eventsthat make it possible to customize SharePoint’s default behavior

Kicking it up a notch

Given that WSS is an application platform, it makes sense that Microsofthas released several products that are built upon that application

platform MOSS 2007 is one such product; it’s essentially a WSS

application

As a WSS application, MOSS consumes WSS resources and extendsWSS to provide completely new features Similar to how WSS consists of

a set of services, MOSS adds the following services:

Core services are the foundational features that enable MOSS

records management (see Chapter 15) as well as Web contentmanagement (see Chapter 16) WSS also provides documentmanagement, but MOSS adds to those features with informationmanagement policies and document information panels I like tothink of Web content management as MOSS’s publishing feature.Web content management makes it possible to publish content to

a site that’s intended to be read by many people

People and personalization encompasses all the features

Enterprise search provides the ability to index all content within

SharePoint and content outside SharePoint Search is

configurable so that you can manage the relevancy of resultsdelivered to users See Chapter 14

Business process integration provides the ability to integrate

data from outside sources with SharePoint (see Chapter 17).MOSS can render InfoPath forms in the browser to automatebusiness forms (see Chapter 8)

All SharePoint deployments require Windows Server 2003 WSS version

3 is part of Windows Server 2003, so you don’t have to buy separatelicenses for WSS You can download WSS from the Microsoft Web site

MOSS 2007 products are available for purchase only through volumelicensing agreements; you can’t buy them via retail channels Microsoft

associated with each agreement varies depending on the number ofdesktops in your organization, the benefits you receive, and whether youpay up-front or a certain amount each year See the Microsoft ProductsLicensing Advisor at www.microsoft.com/licensing/mpla for

assistance with choosing a licensing agreement

Properly licensing MOSS 2007 requires a combination of server licenses

and Client Access Licenses (CALs) A server license allows you to run the software, such as MOSS 2007, on your server Clients need a CAL to

access the server’s features Two types of CALs are used for MOSS2007:

Base CAL allows clients to access the portal, personalization,

search, and enterprise content management features of MOSS2007

Enterprise CAL allows clients to access the business

intelligence and business process integration features of MOSS

2007 (such as the Report Center, Business Data Catalog, ExcelServices, and InfoPath Forms Services)

If you want users to access the features provided by the Enterprise CAL,you must also purchase a Base CAL You need to provide an EnterpriseCAL to only those clients who need to access the advanced services

back-end database WSS installs with an internal database;

however, you likely want to use SQL Server 2000 with servicepack 4 or higher or SQL Server 2005 with service pack 1 or

higher

Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server: To

ensure that remote users are accessing SharePoint in the mostsecure fashion, implement ISA Server or a similar product ISAServer has automatic configuration tools for protecting

SharePoint

Microsoft ForeFront Security for SharePoint: ForeFront

protects your SharePoint server from malware, viruses, and

enables compliance with content policies, such as prohibiting theuse of profanity in documents saved to document libraries If youchoose not to use ForeFront, you need some kind of anti-virussolution

Microsoft Exchange Server: Microsoft’s premiere e-mail and

collaboration platform integrates with SharePoint search

Although Exchange and SharePoint play nicely together, you canuse any e-mail server to send e-mail to SharePoint

to Office 2007 And while you’re at it, you might as well install Vista, too.The truth of the matter is that, although your users will certainly have thebest experience with Office 2007, you can work just fine with Office 2003.You can use previous versions of Office and even non-Office applicationswith SharePoint See Chapter 9

To customize SharePoint, you need either SharePoint Designer 2007 orVisual Studio 2005

Although understanding the technologies that enable SharePoint andSharePoint’s features is important, I believe that understanding how

SharePoint fits into your existing information systems environment iseven more valuable than understanding all the SharePoint features Justbecause SharePoint can be used for a certain purpose, doesn’t meanthat your organization will find it useful I believe that understanding

SharePoint’s role in your organization is key to making the business casefor implementing SharePoint

An information systems environment is the mix of software, hardware,and manual processes within a company In some cases, deciding to useSharePoint is easy because SharePoint solves an obvious problem Forexample, you can use SharePoint to automate business processes byusing electronic forms However, I find that most companies intuitivelythink they need SharePoint but can’t quite figure out the arguments forwhy

All the information found in an organization’s information systems

environment are the company’s information assets Typically, we think of

assets as tangible items of value, such as equipment and land

Information (such as how well the company is performing and who thecompany’s top five competitors are) may be intangible, but I think mostpeople agree they’re of value to the business

Most organizations have many disparate repositories for storing theirinformation assets Some repositories are easier to manage than others.Listed here are some information assets and where they’re commonlystored: